(i) Technical Field
The present invention relates to a toner recovery device having a toner state detecting function, an image forming apparatus, a non-transitory computer readable medium storing a program for realizing a toner state detecting function in a computer of the image forming apparatus, and a toner state determining method.
(ii) Related Art
An image forming apparatus is an apparatus, such as a copier, a facsimile, a printer, or a multifunctional machine having these functions, which forms an image on a recording material such as paper with toner.
In such an image forming apparatus, the particle size of toner is decreasing with a demand for increasing the resolution of a formed image.
Moreover, such an image forming apparatus includes a toner recovery device that recovers through, a toner recovery path, toner which becomes unnecessary for image formation.